The present invention relates in general to jewelry, and in particular to a new and useful piece of jewelry, in the form of an earring, a broach, a pendant, or other similar jewelry to be worn, which has elements that appear to be full and tubular but in fact are only half tubes.
U.S. Pat. No. 169,993 (1875) discloses elongated concave elements for use in a decorative fringe. The elements are straight and not curved in a main plane of the fringe nor do they include inner and outer highly polished surfaces. As will be more apparent with a full reading of this Specification, U.S. Pat. No. 169,993 would not produce the tubular appearance and illusion of the present invention, which, with only half as much material, produces the appearance that the jewelry is made of fully tubular elements having the corresponding size and mass.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,353,372 discloses a pair of half-tubular members which are permanently attached to each other to form a pierced earring hoop. There is no hint or suggestion that the inner surface of the half-tubes should in anyway be treated since they are not visible when the jewelry is worn.
Other patents that disclose the use of tubular elements in jewelry are U.S. Pat. No. 3,933,009 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,184,481.
Referring to FIGS. 1 and 2, it has been known to manufacture jewelry, in particular earrings, using a ring-shaped element designated 20 having a half-tubular cross section best shown in FIG. 2. This jewelry could only be used with the half-tubular sections lying in a plane which is transverse to the primary plane of the piece of jewelry. The plane of the ring is the plane of the page shown in FIG. 1 or plane P in FIG. 2. Jewelry made with ring 20 must be oriented to have a main plane which is transverse to the plane P, that is the plane of the page in FIG. 2. In this way, the viewer sees the outer convex surface of the ring only and does not see the edge of the ring, for example, if viewed in direction A in FIG. 2. If the jewelry is seen from direction A, the viewer immediately perceives that the ring 20 is not a fully tubular member but rather a half-tubular member. Thus, in all jewelry using one or more rings 20 of the prior art, the rings are always oriented to be substantially edge-wise to the viewer.
Since fine jewelry is made of precious metals, it is always advantageous to find ways of reducing the amount of metal in a piece of jewelry while still maintaining an appearance of substantial size and mass.